The present invention relates to an image information search network system in which search stations are connected through a local area network to image information bank stations using optical disk drive units as a recording medium and being commonly used by at least one image search terminal in each of the search stations.
In recent years, an image filing unit using an optical disk drive unit as a recording medium has been in widespread use. An image filing unit of this type stores a large amount of image information and can access and output desired storage information at high speed. However, conventionally, the image filing unit is independently used as a stand-alone system. Therefore, in an office, if the unit is frequently used by department which are relatively distant therefrom, a unit often needs to be separately installed for each department. For this reason, this poses various problems, such as installation space, cost, operation efficiency, and so on.